Last Sunday I headed out to a few locations to photograph my good friend's little adorable family.
I had done quite a bit of research prior to heading out on the town, but nothing could prepare me for the hiccups I experienced with my Nixon D3100 camera. I could not figure out how to turn the flash off while shooting in "Portrait" & often at times I would hit the button to capture a photo & nothing would happen. I ended up shooting most of the shoot in "Auto Mode" which I felt was cheating. I had learned all about aperture, shutter speed & ISO only to have my camera do all the work for me.
In the end when I uploaded all 200+ photos on to my computer I was pleasantly surprised to find some really stellar shots. I made the decision to purchase an annual subscription to Adobe Light Room & Photo Shop CC . I will admit, I was very overwhelmed with the editing software but after some very helpful tips from my mentor photographer & countless YouTube videos I began to get the hang of softening skin, enhancing eyes, blurring the background, increasing exposure, vibrancy etc. I also played around with the radial & graduated filters. While editing I felt torn between creating the bright vibrant colour photos, or the soft gentle pastel photos. In the end I went with bright colours & high exposure, while toning down some of the greens,yellows, and oranges found this time of year in Manitoba.
I edited down the 200 photos to a round 50 number of definite keepers. I felt in the beginning that I would feel attached to all the photos and would have a hard time deleting some & keeping some, but after time I acted very "cut throat" & if there was one thing about a photo I didn't like, then it got deleted. I'm not going to lie, I spent HOURS editing these photos. After moving on from a photo I found myself going back to change it. I wanted all the photo set to look consistent as a package rather than having for example one photo really bright and white, and the other dark and vibrant. This was rather difficult to achieve.
I was able to present the photos using an online client photo gallery & I think this added a touch of professionalism & allowed her to download all the images at home & right to her computer. She was VERY happy with the end result & I am so excited that I was able to pull this intimidating task off.
I will share a couple of my favourites from the shot, without giving away the identity of my willing subjects ;)
A friend of mine has got me on to VSCO for additional filters to help with the editing process. I downloaded the free package available after having completed editing these photos, but after having played around with a few of them, I think it is going to be very helpful. I also have my eye on a package from Etsy that offers some really beautiful looking filters.
Today I also tackled using Photoshop & Lightroom together. Photoshop has always scared me but I had a request from my next photography subject that I best learn how to photoshop "double chins" and "arm fat". Lightroom does not have the tools to achieve this, so within a half an hour on YouTube I am now able to slim down my subjects in no time on Photoshop & edit in Lightroom interchangeably.
I have to admit this this whole photography thing really escalated real quick in 3 days. I have been up at 6am for the last 3 days, inspired to learn more. It is such an euphoric feeling to be inspired.
Finding a name for my online photography gallery inspired me to provided a link to a blog with the same name, which lead me here to blogger.com. I have been wanting to do a blog for a really long time because I do some much random stuff that I would like to share with the online world.
.....So from this blog you can expect a whole lot of randomness as my Simple Life Unfolds.
Ciao for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment